With Once I Was An Eagle, she's finally made a record that matches the magnitude of her vision, and puts her well ahead of almost any twentysomething singer-songwriter peer working today.

It's largely a tour de force that speaks of love and life with an honesty and clarity recalling the optimism of Curtis Mayfield and the occasional dismay of Marvin Gaye. [5 Sep 2004]

Dismissing it as overly familiar obscures the point. Saadiq is a classicist of the best kind - one who not only carries on tradition but expands it.

It is one of the best of his career.

Soul of a Woman catches Jones at her liveliest and most defiant as she lets her powerful voice loose in catchy, funky songs about overcoming hardships and dealing with fickle lovers.

Cooder manages to make his work both cynical and idealistic. But most importantly, it's authentic. [12 Jun 2005]

Akinmusire generally resists the swaggering shows of force that can mark some young talents, but the record is loaded with strikingly expressive highlights.

Fats Waller never sounded like this, but he sounds more alive than ever.

Musically, Sweatshirt couples the words with rhythmically skewed, sampled loops of vintage soul artists including singer Linda Clifford, funk band the Endeavors and Stax Records group the Soul Children. Unlike the boom-bap producers who did the same in the ’90s, though, Sweatshirt busts the bars into cubist, Earl-descending-a-staircase increments.

They've captured a sound as tangibly uplifting as pop music gets. The Mavericks are back and indeed, just in time.

Murphy skillfully layers his sounds for tracks that somehow feel dense and airy at the same time.

At times, Cee-Lo does show the value of holding on to some of his rap. But he is more distinctive and effective as a singer, which makes part of this long, 65-minute CD feel like wasted time.

“Your Power” is the slowest-and-lowest moment on “Happier Than Ever,” but as a whole the album is softer, quieter, more languid than Eilish’s trap-inflected debut. ... The dreamy-jazzy mode suits her singing, which has never sounded better than it does throughout “Happier Than Ever.”

Some songs from Hitchhiker found purchase on Young’s 1979 electric record “Rust Never Sleeps,” but gathered as they were originally intended, Hitchhiker is a profound addition to Young’s canon of campfire classics.

For those who like their pop delicate and unapologetically deep, this is one for turning up loud and wallowing.

A distinguished and captivating extension of, rather than a dramatic departure from, his rich body of work.

With all seven of the songs clocking in at six to 10 minutes each, Bush takes her time, but the songs aren't built of different parts; it's more like mounting meditations on one theme.

An album with the simmering glow of a masterpiece.

Taken together, Malibu builds on the skills .Paak introduced on his first album, called "Venice."

For Simon, the divine isn't in the persistent hook of pop music but in the most far-reaching of global folk, where sounds, structures and techniques long ago abandoned can be employed in the service of something new and unknown.

Though several doses of this languid, tension-filled music get a tad draining, taken altogether it is a suitable sound for our troubling times, and there's an invigorating mysteriousness.

[An] even more ambitious, superbly crafted follow-up. [28 Aug 2005]

The sound is more varied and lighter on its feet with touches of harpsichord and banjo but anchored by the Hold Steady's signature: thick, humid arena rock, a high-pressure system of cresting guitars and pianos that injects these dramas with tension and embraces all their contradictions and ambiguities.

On “xx” and “Coexist,” the xx was using sadness as a kind of shield; its stylish monotony kept you from regarding the players as real people open to real connection. Here, in contrast, the music’s dynamics make you feel closely involved in what they’re singing about--the highs as well as the lows. I See You presents a band willing to be seen.

The songwriting and the vocal performances here are so strong — she’s playing with cadence and emphasizing the grain of her voice like never before — that eventually you stop caring what’s drawn directly from Swift’s real life and what’s not. It’s just a pleasure to get lost in tunes like “Labyrinth,” in which the singer explores her fear of falling in love again, and “Snow on the Beach,” a gorgeous duet with Lana Del Rey with some of the album’s most affecting imagery.

In its best moments, "Helplessness Blues" sparkles like some sort of divine plan, but a plan that knows the value of mistakes, surprises and even regret.

Breathtakingly beautiful.

Lacking a central, prominent voice, "Twin Cinema" is frequently the schematics without the soul, a formal tour de force with bravado to spare but not a lot of inner life. [4 Sep 2005]

It does reveal how thoughtful and meticulously pretty his songwriting was, even on his most intimate recordings.

Most everything on Over is built with measured precision.... Equally striking is the musical depth.

She goes deep, as deep as any artist working today, into the loud forest of stories where our ideas about love and the self are born. Her trail of crumbs isn't always obvious, but you can follow her there.

A feast for repeated listening, Veckatimest yields the kind of eccentricities a fan can spend months winding and unwinding.

It embraces both Tweedy's classicism and his refusal to settle for the familiar. [20 Nov 2005]

An album that seethes and rocks with real energy and depth. [22 Aug 2004]

Calling an Eels album personal and somber seems redundant, but compared with the guitar-rock discord of the two preceding albums, this return to meticulously crafted pop miniatures seems even more inward-directed. [24 Apr 2005]

Packed with forceful, nuanced songwriting that makes room for face-melting guitar riffery, lovelorn Midwestern teenagers and even, by Hold Steady standards, a bit of actual singing.

Unlike much ambient music, Gave in Rest isn’t made for background listening. In fact, only with volume can you fully appreciate the depth of Davachi’s creation.

Any of these songs could have appeared at any point in the group's discography. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. A full-body massage, after all, is just as pleasing the fourth time as the first.

On her third work, Strange Mercy, her facility with song craft is no less compelling for its cerebral beauty, but too often that cool, constructed quality stands between its maker and the wild bramble of the song.

Long trafficking in a sometimes spare yet intricately drawn sort of Americana that could fit just as comfortably at the turn of the 20th century, their latest delivers the same deceptively simple alchemy of dustily lilting voices, vivid lyrical twists and crisp acoustic flourishes.

The pleasure is in listening to how often the National scrapes up close to maudlin, only to retreat in the nick of time.

Yet as easy as it should be for anyone to appreciate this thrilling and sincere record--truly, there’s no resisting the title track’s euphoric refrain--what might be most admirable about it is Sivan’s determination to make a particular group feel seen.

What’s exciting about the record, beyond its means of delivery, is how the music similarly blends the intimate and the extravagant.

“Evermore,” in a first for Swift, simply repeats its predecessor’s trick, which means the new album’s tunes must stand on their own. And not all of them are up to the standard she set on “Folklore.” There are some incredible songs here. ... Yet too many of the remaining songs on “Evermore” feel like leftovers from “Folklore.” with recycled vocal cadences and melodic phrases or lyrical scenarios that seem unfinished. ... For most pop stars, that might be enough. Not for Swift.

Kaputt is hallucinatory and unstructured, grabbing for whatever it likes in the moment -- it's the radio of Bejar's mind, floating off to sleep.

He sings of the land and of people who struggle to hold on to some small piece of it. It's especially powerful considering the ways in which he's transcended significant struggles of his own.

Yet another compelling collection of expertly and inspiringly crafted songs that remind us just how wondrous pop music can still be.

The luminosity of her performance counters the album's tendency toward dry formalism. [5 Sep 2004]

The album is an artistic statement album with a capital "A," complete with an alter ego and theatrical flourishes that hint toward something of a funk-rock opera about death, spirituality and personal identity.

Apollo Kids shows that one of rap's company drivers is still on the speedway--zooming slightly slower than before, but with better pacing and control of the wheel.

Ace producer and longtime champion of underground hip-hop El-P walks a fine line on Cancer 4 Cure, crafting aggression with militaristic precision.

This Is Happening brims with smaller joys: the contrast between the wafer-dry vocal harmonies and funk-sopping synth bass on “Dance Yourself Clean”; the cut-rate laser noises on the calisthenic banger “Pow Pow.” These things accrue into a wry loveliness that’s never easy or expected.

At 18 songs, “No Holiday” is basically a double album, one that sits somewhere along a continuum of epic works that includes the Clash’s “London Calling” and Liz Phair’s “Exile in Guyville.” The determination, the vision, the energy — it’s real.

It's filthy, audibly painful and it makes every wrong decision imaginable in the course of producing an album. It might also be the most delirious, joyful and defining album of 2010.

To the National's credit, its exploration of the dour has never been this subtle, but by never shifting the mood, the band has also never been this draining.

An expertly crafted experimental pop album that at various points suggests the work of singer Kate Bush, the effects-drenched work of the Cocteau Twins and British art-rock band Talk Talk--all musicians who mix a certain sonic delicacy with studio heavy production--No Shape exudes confidence and vulnerability in equal measures.

There's not a cut here that will make anyone think differently about the Baltimore-born outfit but it's a worthy addition to their catalog.

Birgy harnesses her voice, a breathy, elastic instrument that she flexes in myriad ways, in service of songs in which no two measures are alike. Like Joni Mitchell, Caetano Veloso or Tim Buckley, she phrases her lines with the ear of an actor, conveying emotional info and drama with each oblong couplet.

What could have been a random collection of odds and ends--or worse, a nostalgia grab--isn't so much a look at Wilco's alternate-history past as it is a glimpse at ground the band still has to cover.

It's a lot for anyone to get their hands around, but Cash grips tightly to the aspects of loss she has been able to process, even if the enormity of that task escapes her grasp at times. [21 Jan 2006]

The singer dials down his boisterous rock ’n’ roll attack in pretty, midtempo songs lush with the type of string-and-horn arrangements that once kept session players busy in recording studios up and down Sunset Boulevard. ... What lifts this album above the other is the shapeliness of Springsteen’s tunes, catchier than they’ve been in years, and the vivid images in his lyrics.

Though a showcase for history, Lovano and his band expertly show the many ways these classics can still throw sparks.

Yeezus is minimal but powerful, a record filled with more aural space than anything on “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy,” his excellent 2010 album.

Too little progress and too much mood. [4 Sep 2005]

Bombino and his band have released a killer document not only for fans of North African guitar music; anyone who has ever appreciated a master player make magic on a Fender while a band, which on Nomad is augmented by a few Auerbach’s go-to session men, organizes structures behind him, will find comfort in Bombino’s music.

Much of the album was reportedly written in the throes of deep depression over the death of Case's grandmother. But she came out the other side with a beautiful, insightful record to show for it.

What's remarkable about the album is how un-smoothed-out Cardi B sounds in this new environment. Though she clearly values the approval of old-fashioned arbiters, she won't dull her rough edges, as many have before her, to get it; the vivid result gives the impression that she's still in communion with her core audience.

As usual with the ever-insightful Alvin, the specifics of his raw material are the means to broader truths rather than an end in themselves.

Anima is slightly more songful than Yorke’s previous solo record, 2014’s “Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes.” “I Am a Very Rude Person” and “Impossible Knots” both ride funk grooves that recall Atoms for Peace.

Though there are highlights--including the winsome title track and the jumpy "Wait in the Car"--Deal's songwriting isn't quite as sticky as it used to be, with simpler melodies and fewer turns of phrase that pop like the twisted bumper-sticker slogans she once threw out.

Hynes’ bold and moving album.

That none of this comes off as preachy or simply lame is a testament to both singers’ astute record-making skills. Though the streaming age requires pop stars to be fluent in multiple genres, Pink and Lizzo are expert in more than most.

A few private recordings have surfaced from the early 1960s, but none capture her essence like 1966.

Like kindred spirit Dawn Richard, Kelela veers from the requirements of mainstream R&B to explore her own course, and the result is a portent on the genre’s future.

Two young dudes couldn't make a synth-pop record so polished and seamless, one with a maturity matched only by the constant quest for surprise. Only the Pet Shop Boys can do that, as evidenced by Electric.

A brave, surprising third effort that's both challenging and confident, catchy but progressive, expertly imagined and executed.

Sometimes, a CD scratches an itch you didn't even know you had, and El Camino is that record.

The Bad Plus mostly set aside improvisation in an effort to capture Stravinsky's modernist vision, but in some ways it's never sounded freer.

Ultimately, Tha Carter III will have you believing in Wayne's greatness but wondering why, as often as not, he just isn't very good.

"Wake Up the Nation," if anything, is at times too manically experimental.

UGK 4 Life is the rare swan song that manages to be essential for the music alone.

It's a lively, beautifully individualized collection of observations about the perplexing journey that is life on Earth.

Yet if Todd makes it easy to poke fun at her earnestness, she also makes music that's hard to resist: Layering airy but precise vocal melodies atop hushed, largely acoustic arrangements, the singer offers up a crystal-clear distillation of the vintage Laurel Canyon sound currently in vogue among Todd's feather-and-denim cohorts.

He's simultaneously explored meditative electronic beat music, and on the remarkable FLOTUS (For Love Often Turns Us Still), Wagner has drenched his baritone in vocal effects and, with two collaborators, woven downtempo beat music and his effervescent lyricism into something really magical.

Whether the specifics involve being needed or wanting to fly away, lusting for someone or letting go, "New Amerykah Part Two: Return of the Ankh" is a velvety, but still appealingly odd, exploration that feels more like a casual counterweight than a heady sequel.

At 14 songs and 53 minutes, Ugly is a workout, and there's nary a moment in which Paternoster doesn't seem at risk of losing control to her guitar.

His lyrical approach has actually grown more idiosyncratic. It could be hard to glean much of a sense of Styles’ inner life from his early stuff, but these songs are rich with vivid and intimate details.

"Game Theory" helps rescue a remarkably anemic hip-hop summer. [20 Aug 2006]

There’s something oddly reassuring about these songs — not just “12.38,” a laidback R&B slow jam about a drug-addled sexual encounter, or the sweetly romantic “24.19,” but all 12 of them, even those in which Glover sounds close to overwhelmed by his many misgivings.

The record underscores his real strength, as a musical storyteller.

A fitting subtitle could be “Everything You Know About Funk is Wrong,” thanks to a couple of flat-out stunning solo performances on this session. This is not the Holy Grail of lost or shelved Prince albums.

"Blunderbuss" is, quite simply, a marvelous rock album.

The music reinforces Wolf Parade's edge-of-desperation outlook by refusing to offer the comfort of conventional pop music's reassuring repetition. Even if some choruses recur during a song, the music behind them is never the same as the last time around. [23 Oct 2005]

As freaky as the production gets, Little Big Town’s crystalline vocals (and sturdy structures by Nashville’s craftiest songwriters) keep the music approachable, even tidy; it’s always heading toward a catchy chorus.

The release, available on the major streaming services and as a CD package with bonus DVD (featuring a high-resolution surround-sound remix and two other alternate mixes), offers rich perspective on the evolution of Reed's approach, highlighting an artist in transition, looking for a hit or two and adapting to a new decade.

The Beasties' irreverence is what made them stand out in the first place; that their willful chaos continues to charm and mutate so many years on is the big surprise.

The result is a confident, and comforting, celebration of American roots music.

The referents are hipper than with previous Disney stars looking to break out of the Mouse House, and the language is coarser with F-bombs dropping every few tunes. There’s nothing offhand about these songs, though; each has been worked to a kind of exquisitely scuffed polish that suits the album’s hall-of-mirrors vibe.